Coastal erosion dynamics on the permafrost-dominated Bykovsky Peninsula, north Siberia, 1951–2006

Abstract

This study investigates the rate of erosion during the 1951Á2006 period on the Bykovsky Peninsula, located north-east of the harbour town of Tiksi, north Siberia. Its coastline, which is characterized by the presence of ice-rich sediment (Ice Complex) and the vicinity of the Lena River Delta, retreated at a mean rate of 0.59 m/yr between 1951 and 2006. Total erosion ranged from 434 m of erosion to 92 m of accretion during these 56 years and exhibited large variability (s 0 45.4). Ninety-seven percent of the rates observed were less than 2 m/yr and 81.6% were less than 1 m/yr. No significant trend in erosion could be recorded despite the study of five temporal subperiods within 1951Á 2006. Erosion modes and rates actually appear to be strongly dependant on the nature of the backshore material, erosion being stronger along low-lying coastal stretches affected by past or current thermokarst activity. The juxtaposition of wind records monitored at the town of Tiksi and erosion records yielded no significant relationship despite strong record amplitude for both data sets. We explain this poor relationship by the only rough incorporation of sea-ice cover in our storm extraction algorithm, the use of land-based wind records vs. offshore winds, the proximity of the peninsula to the Lena River Delta freshwater and sediment plume and the local topographical constraints on wave development.

Terrestrial processes affecting unlithified coastal erosion disparities in central fjords of Svalbard

“…As the focus of this study concerns the terrestrial influence on erosional differences between diverse geomorphologies, removal of eroded sediments and (re)deposition is not thoroughly discussed or given examination. Previous work acknowledges that cliff morphology plays a large role in coastal erosion (Harper 1990;Solomon et al 1994;Manson et al 2005;Lantuit et al 2011). In 1990, Harper defined four erosional coastal types, including ''ice-poor tundra cliffs'' and another ''ice-rich tundra cliffs.''…”

The Arctic Coastal Dynamics Database: A New Classification Scheme and Statistics on Arctic Permafrost Coastlines

“…In the best-case scenario, rates of erosion compiled at high resolution (less than every 500 m) were used to populate the classification. These rates were extracted from the most recently published datasets, including data from Jorgenson and Brown (2005), Lantuit and Pollard (2008), Solomon (2005), Jones et al (2008Jones et al ( , 2009aJones et al ( , 2009b and Lantuit et al (2010b). They generally use remote sensing imagery from the second half of the twentieth century and sometimes cover over 50 years of coastline evolution.…”

Observing Muostakh disappear: permafrost thaw subsidence and erosion of a ground-ice-rich island in response to arctic summer warming and sea ice reduction

“…Although coastal erosion studies in the East Siberian Arctic using early aerial photography are common (Grigoriev, 1993;Are, 1999;Lantuit et al, 2011b;Pizhankova, 2011), few use stereophotogrammetry, generally because image parameters for old aerial photos are unknown. Therefore, valuable elevation information available from these data sets still remains untapped.…”

“…They attribute this increase to more frequent block failure as a consequence of higher sea surface temperatures and longer fetch, which potentially create more erosionally effective storm events (Jones et al, 2009b). Lantuit et al (2011b) study storm climatology and use a set of aerial photographs and satellite images to investigate erosion rates around the entire Bykovsky Peninsula near Tiksi in the Laptev Sea over six consecutive time periods. They show a clear dependency of coastal erosion on backshore thermokarst geomorphology, but do not find either a pronounced temporal trend in the mean annual coastal retreat rate over 55 years (−0.59 m a −1 ), nor a relation to storm activity.…”